Warning: the following is my own assessments of a specific area of Tokyo, I’m sure there are many people living in the suburbs who are happy there and if you feel you belong there, then you probably do! Obviously not all suburbs are the same too
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Today I had a meeting with a consultant who helps me with all the crazy paperwork I’ve got to figure out as a foreigner in Japan hoping to get a permanent visa.
He’s moved out to a suburban part of Tokyo which physically looks pretty close to me on the map and if I were driving a car should take about 35 minutes. If there were a highway connecting these areas it might only be 15 minutes.
Just a few kilometers but a completely different world.
He moves due to be close to a family member who is having a hard time.
It’s hard for me to imagine what draws everyone else to this area though.
It’s seen as a cheaper, quieter part of Tokyo, but how much cheaper and how much quieter?
I respect people’s choices and how they want to live, or I try to at least. But I have a really hard time understanding sometimes.
The cheapest 30-35sq meter apartments in my area are about 500 usd or about 650 after utilities. Maybe you could get 100 cheaper usd off if you really look for it in this area, but most cheap places cost about the same….
A nicer apartment might be cheaper than a nicer apartment in my area…but it’s about an hour from everything else in Tokyo by train. If you are willing to spend the money, why not just go a few kilometers outside the city? It would take an extra 15 minutes by train or 30 minutes by car but you could live in a house 3-4x the size with nature around for the same price.
I don’t see how saving 15 minutes on the train is worth the sacrifice of half the living space since no one really drives into Tokyo.
I don’t see how saving an extra $100 a month is worth the sacrifice in convenience.
It feels like people move to this area to get the best of both worlds, but in reality what they get is the worst of both worlds and the best of neither.
Most people are commuters and it seems that most don’t have the money to buy a house or even an apartment in the center of Tokyo (few people do these days, I’m not judging!).
I can only imagine that the majority of people who live here just had the vague knowledge that it was cheaper and easier to find an apartment and so they looked here. In other words they were swayed because of a lack of information.
Perhaps I’m overly biased because I grew up in the suburbs and the group think was unbearable for me, so much so that I did anything I could to get out. But at least the suburbs I came from had space. You could have your own yard.
My parents moved there because they thought it would be good to have kids. The schools were supposed to be good. They lived above their means just to send us to a decent public school. But I ended up being more inclined to arts and my brother more of a handyman, neither of which their huge sacrifice really helped.
The pressure to conform was far greater than anything I’ve subjected myself to since, and I’ve lived in Asia for 15 years. Despite Asian cultures being more group oriented, I always manage to find the groups that respect individuality. But that pressure to conform weighed heavy on me even after I left it, even while rejecting the pressure in every major decision of my life. It shaped the way I see people, and filled me with fear of the futility of going against the grain, perhaps one of the reasons I relate so well to people in East Asia, similar experiences.
And so my image of the suburbs is generally people who are duped by a story and commit to it, despite it probably not being one that really works for them. This especially applies in Japan where the houses in the suburbs aren’t all that big and the countryside is the only place where you can actually have sufficient space for anything.
I know it’s not like that for everyone, and I haven’t lived in the countryside long enough to expel some of my romanticized ideas about it but I am far more attracted to a place filled with nature or a place with a vibrant arts and cultural scene, one or the other, preferably both.
But I’m reminded of a friend who always hooked me up with great work contacts while he himself worked a miserable job. “It pays less than my current gig” he’d say, not caring that the work hours were 1/3 of his. “It’s too far from where I live”, but it was closer to where he wanted to move….
I’m also reminded of people who seemed to look down on my slumy area in Xiamen, despite the fact that it was safe and my apartment was well furnished, as were 30-50% of them. I lived better than most people I met, 5 minutes from the beach, for 1/4 the price of most other areas just because I didn’t judge the area for being “too poor”.
I just can’t understand some people’s logic sometimes…it’s almost as if they can’t see opportunity when it’s glaring them in the face and so they settle for what other people say is the route the should take.
Sometimes I think about whether or not I should hold my judgements of such a place and think seriously about starting a shop there, for the mere fact that there would be no competition. But we also lack the support network and from my experience growing up in the suburbs, the people who live there aren’t as open to things that are not familiar to them.
Perhaps if we had a few friends in such an area we’d think about livening it up. I think that’s the one thing I could really imagine someone moving here to do, trying to provide something that doesn’t really exist in excess in this particular area. There is very little competition for shops.
Because of that, the one positive thing I found is that some of the older shops have remained opened where most in the central part of Tokyo have disappeared due to buildings being rebuilt and rent going up.
I got lunch in this old shop which is at least 3 times the size as it would be near my station and would either be packed all times of day or closed by now.
The electronic mahjong table is 🔥. I love this! The only problem is that if this shop closes, there’s literally nothing else with character in the whole neighborhood. I hope it’s passed on to someone in its current form when the old man running it retires.
My current goal is to start a tiny little base in our area near the center of Tokyo and then to build a second base in the countryside and find ways to build a bridge between country life and city life.
My dream is suburbs that really do have the best of both worlds, an intricate network of passionate artists and craftsmen and teachers and builders and business owners and supporters of such culture, possibilities in the countryside, and more of a relaxed slow, playful vibe in the city.
Here’s a peek into my world:
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The real estate company might have a lot to do with pressuring people to buy there. I remember when one of my students was buying a house, the real estate company convinced him that he couldn't afford anything in Okazaki and that he would have to buy something in a suburb of Nagoya. Despite that meaning he would have to take the train 40 minutes everyday (times two) to come back to Okazaki for work and back, he gave in to their pressure and bought in Nagoya. Didn't make any sense to me. Could be similar things at work in Tokyo, pushing people to less convenient areas.
That mahjong table is cool. One of these days I'm going to have to learn how to play that game.